Satellite Image of the Neighborhood I Grew Up In



Village of Host

Although I grew up in the Village of Host, our address was Womelsdorf, Pennsylvania, because Host wasn't large enough for an address of its own. My parents still live, with my Nephew, in the home that my father built. My Dad built our house from somewhere around 1970 to 1977. In the meantime we lived in trailer where the garden is today. I was born in 1971. So I literally was raised in a trailor. From what I am told, my Dad bought the three acres of overgrown land in 1967, for 1200 dollars. My Dad then proceeded to build a four bedroom house, with an oversized two car garage, a pavilion, and a chicken coup for the next seven years. This is clearly my Dads biggest achievement, and the one that I am most grateful for.
The three acres of land doesn't seem like much, but when you add in the many many acres of farmland to the east, a 200 foot limestone quarry hidden in the woods to the west, and a sizeable woods to the north, it adds up to a lot of freedom for a kid to wander and explore.

Hershy Meyer, the farmer who owned the adjacent land to the east, lived over the hill and at least a mile away. I never really visted Hershy Meyer's gray limestone farmhouse and I rarely adventured close enough or him to give a damn who I was, so I really took advantage of his farmland whenever I could to traverse and explore. There were sinkholes in the fields, shear rock cliffs and farm dumps in the woods (seasonally fresh slaughtered cow heads included), rusty and abandoned farm equipment on the edge of the fields, and worn smooth wild animal trails to follow everywhere. In the summer I would run through the alfalpha and corn, and in the fall I would trap for furs in the woods and have corn fights with the corn lelftover from the inefficient combines. In the winter I would sled from the plateau at the top of the field to the fence near my house, and in the spring I would look for nightcrawlers in the freshly overturned soil. Summertime brought butterflies to the conservation easement area and we could throws stones in the air for bats to chase through the twilight. I will always cherish the warmth of the lightning bugs flashing across the yard in the warm August evenings.